Seriously how hard is it to fix the audio system?

Better settle in for a long wait. That bug has existed since I took delivery in 2013, and maybe before. The Model S media capabilities are so far down the priorities list they're practically non-existent.

In your case, you might consider putting your audiobooks on your phone and using Bluetooth. The phone will do a better job of maintaining your position, and for audiobooks the quality degradation of Bluetooth is unlikely to greatly affect your enjoyment. I fully agree it sucks, but that's your best option.

OP, yes, I'm frustrated over this as well. It honestly ruins my MS experience. You'll find several other threads where this has been described and discussed. Please be sure you formally report this to Tesla via email or upon your next SC visit. It is acknowledged by Tesla as an issue that will be resolved by a future firmware release -- but there is NO ETA. My hope is enough owners take the time to not just write about about their problems here and gain the benefit from self-help forums like this may provide, but they also complain to Tesla -- then maybe, just maybe, someday it will become a priority and be resolved along with album art and the growing number of software items needing resolution.

It really is mystifying. It smells like something an intern could fix in a few days.

This happens with all MS cars during scheduled charging? I don't listen to audio books, but I would have never been the wiser about playing music all night long.

kevincwelch said:

This happens with all MS cars during scheduled charging? I don't listen to audio books, but I would have never been the wiser about playing music all night long.

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Yup, it's pretty odd. I find the next morning I'm way down through dozens of tracks if I was playing a playlist after over-night charges or another song may be playing when I go to get back in my MS the next time. Also, if I let my MS sit in my garage for a few days without running it, my "vampire loss" is a good 2-3+ miles greater each day because of the USB phantom playing problem sucking energy, which worries me if I were to ever leave it parked for an extended period... I just don't always remember to switch my audio source from my USB stick to say FM, or physically unplug my USB stick before parking every single time to avoid the phantom playing problem. It really is ridiculous, as there is no true Audio ON/OFF, pause won't always stay paused because of the phantom playing problem, and Tesla has not chosen to fix the USB Media Player problems since MS was introduced.

Gizmotoy said:

Better settle in for a long wait. That bug has existed since I took delivery in 2013, and maybe before. The Model S media capabilities are so far down the priorities list they're practically non-existent.

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The "listening at night" bug is frustrating, but it hasn't been around since 2013. Pretty sure it started circa 6.0-ish.

Also starts playing when use climate to pre-heat/cool via app. It is like the resume when door opens feature is instead triggering off the power on.

Betcha it doesn't happen if don't use power save feature. But I haven't tried that.

Todd Burch said:

The "listening at night" bug is frustrating, but it hasn't been around since 2013. Pretty sure it started circa 6.0-ish.

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Right. It started with six. Seems to be better in 7 (one of the very few things that isn't much worse).

Problems started when sleep mode was first introduced in 2013. When resuming from sleep, the software was not properly recovering the media player settings, losing the current position. Fortunately, it was possible to disable sleep mode - and that fixed the problem.

Around when 6.2 was released, the changed the sleep mode settings. Now "OFF" no longer turns off sleep mode - sleep mode is always engaged overnight. So there isn't any way to completely turn off the sleep mode. And I suspect that they are still having problems recovering the media player settings when the software wakes up - resulting in loss of the media source selection, current position in USB media, and phantom playing of music when no one is in the car.

While they really need to get the sleep/wake mode to properly save and restore the media player settings, they also need to fix the car's sleep mode settings. If people really want sleep mode only overnight, then they should change OFF back to really mean sleep mode is OFF and a new setting for OVERNIGHT (sleep mode is only enabled overnight).

Personally, I would always keep the car is OFF mode, and use sleep mode only when travelling or when I leave my car parked overnight without a charger (airport parking).

In addition to the sleep mode-related problems, the current media player software also seems to frequently have "hiccups" during playback - noticeable glitches while playing songs. This probably means there is a conflict between apps running on the same processor - and a higher priority app is interrupting media playback long enough to disrupt the playback, even if it only for a brief period.

The sleep mode problem should be something that can be fixed with a small amount of effort - making sure that the media player settings are all being saved and restored.

Fixing the player hiccups may be more complicated - because the changes may impact several apps - but they still should fix it.

Personally, I think the "improvement" to the media system will be CarPlay / Android Auto, as Elon told Hong Kong owners in January.

Elon Musk said:

As we have sort of thought about it more, the logic thing to do from an app standpoint is to maybe allow apps on your iPhone or Android to project onto the center display, as opposed to trying to create a new app ecosystem. So that is probably going to be our focus in the future to enable you to project apps from your phone to the center screen.

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Tesla is moving away from an SDK and instead planning to allow app mirroring from iPhones to center consoles | 9to5Mac

that sounds promising for the future

Festerfeet said:

that sounds promising for the future

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The question is when it will happen...To me there is a lot of room to improve the functionality of the car in addition to the auto pilot features...Sadly auto pilot features have been given more importance.

bollar said:

Personally, I think the "improvement" to the media system will be CarPlay / Android Auto, as Elon told Hong Kong owners in January.



Tesla is moving away from an SDK and instead planning to allow app mirroring from iPhones to center consoles | 9to5Mac

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I personally don't interpret Elon's statement to say "there WILL BE CarPlay / Android Auto". There would be licensing and therefore ongoing extra Tesla costs involved. Elon more likely meant exactly what he said -- Tesla attempting to provide (only) a iPhone/Android MIRRORING function, must like what Apple AirPlay has provided for years -- not the much more full-function CarPlay/Android Auto functionality.

The Elon quote is vague enough that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. Until there's code, no sense in getting too worked up about it. It does seem like a refreshing admission of reality though. "If at first you don't succeed, try try again. Then give up, there's no sense being a damn fool about it."

bob_p said:

Problems started when sleep mode was first introduced in 2013. When resuming from sleep, the software was not properly recovering the media player settings, losing the current position. Fortunately, it was possible to disable sleep mode - and that fixed the problem.

Around when 6.2 was released, the changed the sleep mode settings. Now "OFF" no longer turns off sleep mode - sleep mode is always engaged overnight. So there isn't any way to completely turn off the sleep mode. And I suspect that they are still having problems recovering the media player settings when the software wakes up - resulting in loss of the media source selection, current position in USB media, and phantom playing of music when no one is in the car.

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Right. This is an extremely longstanding bug, made more obvious recently by a change to how sleep works. I checked my paperwork. I see it mentioned as something for the SC to look at for my first service visit in Jan 2014.

After the WiFi option was introduced, I also recall some early, technically-savvy owners wondering how their vehicle was chewing through so much data at night. Turns out Slacker was just chugging along all night.

You used to be able to work around it by changing the sleep settings, but Tesla removed those options recently.

bob_p said:

Problems started when sleep mode was first introduced in 2013. When resuming from sleep, the software was not properly recovering the media player settings, losing the current position. Fortunately, it was possible to disable sleep mode - and that fixed the problem.

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Interesting. I've used sleep mode ever since it was introduced, and never had the problem of the car listening to music on its own and losing its place until v6 came along. Wonder if it started on only certain hardware configs.

This is also mystifying to me. Our car never plays music to itself and we have sleep mode enabled.

The problems appear to primarily be with USB playback. Though I have seen it lose the selected source overnight when we were listening to other sources (such as XM).

Todd Burch said:

Interesting. I've used sleep mode ever since it was introduced, and never had the problem of the car listening to music on its own and losing its place until v6 came along. Wonder if it started on only certain hardware configs.

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This has been my experience too. V6 really messed up audio. It does appear that v7.1 has fixed the playing overnight problem, although it's introduced a "have to reconnect the thumb drive" problem. And there is still a 90% loss of album art and the status bar.